Building Nineteenth-Century Latin America: Re-Rooted Cultures, Identities, and Nations

Chapter II. A Brief Syphilography of Nineteenth-Century Latin America

246 11 A Brief Syphilography of Nineteenth-Century Latin America Juan Carlos González Espitia I deas of construction, building, and foundation are recurrent in the study of nineteenth-century Latin America. The processes of independence and the implementation of republicanism are generally presented under the positive light of agglutination and progress. In this sense, discussing ideas about a debilitating disease during the period could be seen as a marginal study—one perhaps more related to medicine and sanitation than to identity, nation building, history, or culture. This sort of inquiry into an illness could be further rejected if the name of the disease is syphilis, and not, for example, the less taboo malaria or yellow fever. In this chapter, nevertheless, I will study ways in which the literary and social implications of syphilis indeed make it the most representative disease of nineteenth-century Latin America, in the same way that tuberculosis (then also known as consumption) functioned in Europe during the same period. Syphilis is the metaphoric Latin American malady. One of the reasons for my claim is the very origin of the disease, a source of heated debate even today between those who argue that it was brought to the indigenous people by the conquerors (together with horses, swords, and religion ) and those who maintain that it was the itchy gift given by the indigenous people to the Europeans, who carried it (at the same time as parrots, pineapples, and gold) in their wooden vessels back to their countries.1 The contested starting point of syphilis amplifies the ambivalent position of Latin American thinkers after independence: an idealized identity of clean and fructiferous origin was absolutely necessary in order to found the new nations, but their romanticization of the aboriginal past was doomed from its inception by sores and pustules. As I will show, syphilis is also representative of Latin America in that understanding and treatment of the disease mirrored the manner in which the recently independent republics, in their search for autonomy beyond Juan Carlos González Espitia 247 liberation, depended on modes of rationalization elaborated in and exported by European countries. Medical technology, official regulation, and literary production related to syphilis replicated the problems that resulted from the desire to attain the progress and modernity shining on the other side of the Atlantic. As I will discuss below, syphilis epitomizes how ­ nineteenth-century Latin American societies developed a discourse of internal stratification and differentiation—not necessarily based on a specific idea of racial delineation, but more out of fear for the fate of their nations as a consequence of moral depravity. Likewise, syphilis reveals the ways in which feminine roles were assigned during this period (which we learned about in Chapter 10) and how these roles changed over time, especially in relation to the division between private and public life. This assessment of syphilis in Latin America allows for a distinct peek into everyday life not found in many of the general studies of nation formation . With this in mind, nation conformation can be seen as the answer to specific problems such as the eradication of disease, links between illness and commerce, and ways to control female prostitutes. An approach of this sort requires a comprehensive study that goes beyond the scope of the present chapter, in particular because it entails an examination of what I call the “profane trinity” of commerce, sexuality, and disease. Maintaining its metaphorical qualities, I propose here to isolate different stages of the presence of syphilis and show, with the help of literary examples, how they relate to the nexuses of dependence, social change, and cultural production. From Private Embrace to Public Disease Syphilis was already present (although in a hidden fashion) at the moment of independence. In general, new republican governments approached each case of syphilis in the same way that it had been handled by colonial authorities—that is, as an individual, isolated contagion to be treated by particular doctors, and not subject to direct, official regulation. There were timid changes in the containment of prostitution, more because of the need to hide the indecent presence of prostitutes in the streets than because of syphilis itself.2 Treatment was the radical use of mercury in its many presentations (ointments, concoctions, infusions, fumigations, tints), which produced in patients loss of hair and teeth, severe digestive problems , and—on more than one occasion—death. Doctors did not know the difference between syphilis and gonorrhea, and therefore the treatment for [18.217...